It seems that Izzet Control may once again be the deck to beat, winning 1st place in both events. Congrats to both Arctic_Ghost and Bubalix on their respective wins. Panoslennon also placed in Top 8 with yet another Izzet build. While there were slight differences among these three builds, each of them relief upon a strong base of removal spells and card draw, including Fiery Temper, Galvanic Bombardment, Take Inventory, and Tormenting Voice, all of which enable multiple activations of Thermo-Alchemist.
littlefield went right back to work with his Simic Good Stuff build, making the playoffs in both events by claiming Top 8 in SPDC and Top 4 in MPDC. This deck is all about the big creatures like Peema Outrider, Wretched Gryff, and Self-Assembler, backed up with a full set of Take Inventory and some removal.
Surprisingly, the remaining eight decks were all unique from one another. Reco91 took 2nd place in SPDC with his Bant tokens build that first made its appearance last week, while Storm_blade took 2nd place in MPDC with the Esper Artifacts archetype. For SPDC, Dimir Control, MonoBlack Control, Orzhov Allies, and Gruul Monsters made up the remaining decks in the playoffs, with Rakdos Control taking the final playoff spot in MPDC. Also of note is the fact that MonoRed did not appear at all in the top decks, despite taking 1st place in both events last week.
So now the question becomes whether or not Self-Assembler is constraining the metagame into only allowing certain decks to prevail, as well as whether or not its presence is causing a downward trend in the number of players in these events. Perhaps it is indeed time to seriously consider taking action on this card, even if it's just to try a week without it or even offering a bounty for winning decklists that don't include it.
I just got an idea from a brilliant lady friend that suggested that another option would be to restrict Self-Assembler to 2 max per deck, a sort of half restriction a la Vintage.
ReplyDeleteI like the bounty idea but I think if we are going to go Assemblerless for one week we should ALL do it. Given the option of playing Assembler or not, not matter how big the bounty, the decks that I build will likely be strictly better with 4x Assembler, and I feel like the advantage over non-Assembler lists will be pronounced.
In summary, I am on board with a restriction to 2 max or a completely Assemblerless week of SPDC/MPDC for the sake of science and testing how different the format would look.